ABSTRACT
In 2006, major new alluvial diamond deposits were discovered in Marange District in eastern Zimbabwe. The discovery coincided with a dramatic and worsening economic crisis of accumulation and political crisis of legitimacy for interests associated with the ruling ZANU-PF party and state. The result by 2007 was a new case of ‘blood diamonds’, whereby state security forces secretly oversaw the extraction and criminal smuggling of rough diamonds – in the process, violently displacing local communities, informal miners and legal title-holders, and depriving the national treasury of significant new revenues and foreign exchange earnings. Unlike other infamous cases like Sierra Leone and Angola, where the illicit trade in diamonds helped fuel armed rebellion, Zimbabwe’s conflict diamonds came to pose a threat to legitimate government from within. Following the 2008 national elections and the subsequent formation of a Government of National Unity (GNU) in 2009, corruption and criminality associated with Marange diamonds negatively inflected the trajectory of Zimbabwe’s fragile national political transition. The GNU, inaugurated in February 2009, brought ZANU-PF together with two opposition parties: Movement for Democratic Change-Tsvangirai (MDC-T) and Movement for Democratic Change-Mutambara. It also included some new institutions for monitoring and facilitating the GNU and furthering the transition towards the next government in 2013, as well as provisions for drafting and finalising a new democratic
constitution. Soon, however, the convergence of political need and elite accumulation opportunities in Marange’s alluvial diamond geology came to pose a direct challenge to the viability of the new ‘unity’ government. Blood diamonds emerged as a stark litmus test of its success.
